From the author of the critically acclaimed Some of My Best Friends (a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year) comes a brilliant, incisive, and unforgettable memoir that illuminates one of the most significant archetypes in our culture—the mentor—and the dynamics it breeds.

Tajja Isen was young when she realized that she responded unusually well to authority. Even as a child, she was a classic overachiever. But something else happened when someone in charge turned their gaze on her: She lit up, she stood straighter, she followed direction. She didn't just want to earn their approval. She wanted to please them. In exchange, she hoped they would tell her who to be.

Years later, as an adult, Isen realized how dependent she'd become on this pattern. Her personal and professional life relied on this ruthless tendency to seek—and often lose—herself in boundary-crossing bonds with her superiors. Tough Love braids Isen's journey with cultural criticism to explore the significance of the mentor: the complex role they play in the myths of mastery and meritocracy, and why she spent decades buying into those narratives, even when they did more harm than good.

With unflinching honesty and a forensic attention to power dynamics, Isen interrogates her attraction to these figures and how it fueled her ambition—from her success as a child actor, through her obsessive dedication as a student, to her eventual emergence as a writer. This is a fearless exploration of the knotty intersection between desire, submission, influence, and the formation of the self.

At once dazzlingly original and utterly relatable, Tough Love is a crystalline examination of power, ambition, and the challenge of becoming the person you want to be.